Saturday, April 17, 2010

"He it is who has sent His Messenger (Mohammed) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam) to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist." Koran 61:9

Hezbollah (Party of Allah) in Lebanon

Why is Islam constantly a source of war, violence and discord? The problem simply enough is theological, because to its followers the validity of Islam is directly connected to its physical supremacy. As followers of the purported "final revelation" to mankind, Muslims not only have the obligation to conquer and subjugate the rest of the world, their religion is only meaningful to the extent that they can carry on the work begun by Mohammed.

Since Islam derives meaning primarily from physical supremacy, war becomes an act of faith. To believe in Islam, is to have faith that it must and will conquer and subjugate the entire world. And to be a true Muslim, one must feel called to aid in that global conquest, whether it is by providing money and resources to the Jihadists or to be a Jihadist yourself. Because Islam is expressed in physical supremacy, violence against non-Muslims become the essence of religion. And anything that suggests Islam is not absolutely superior touches on Islamic insecurities as blasphemy.

When Muslims explode into outbursts of violent rage over seemingly petty things like a cartoon or a teddy bear named Mohammed, it is because to them, any loss of face for Islam is the worst kind of blasphemy. Because Islam is a religion of physical supremacy, and anything that challenges that supremacy is a direct attack on their beliefs. What the Ten Commandments are for the Jew, or the resurrection of Jesus for the Christian-- is the physical dominance of Islam to the Muslim. It is the basis and fulfillment of his faith.

Therefore by waging war on the infidels, by planting a minaret in one of their cities, by forcing non-Muslims into a submissive position-- to the Muslim this is an act that affirms the truth and power of Islam. By causing infidels to "lose face", the Muslim fulfills the Koranic verse which promises that Allah had sent Mohammed to make Islam supreme over all religions. By contrast when Islam "loses face", an act of blasphemy has been committed, which can only be righted religiously by killing the non-Muslims, thereby forcing them to lose face and once again affirming the physical superiority of Islam.

This creates the cycle of violence that the media loves to harp on so much, but it is not the result of Western oppression, it is the result of Muslims feeling oppressed if they are not on top. When your belief system explicitly proclaims its wille zur macht, its Will to Power, the idea of multiculturalism and co-existence becomes a joke. To co-exist with non-Muslims is itself blasphemous for a Muslim, which proclaims "Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends" (Koran 5:51) and whose final command was to ethnically cleanse the Jews and Christians of the Arabian Peninsula. Islam does not co-exist, for its followers its truth can only be found in conquering non-Muslims.

Whereas most religions can accept being in the inferior position, because their fundamental faith in spiritual, rather than material-- Islam has little to it but the material. Even its paradise exists in the form of the sort of physical pleasures that its followers crave, fancy robes, exquisite banquets, golden couches, and of course that famed appeal to the dedicated Jihadist, "curvaceous virgins... and an overflowing cup" (Koran 78:33-34). Islamic Heaven is essentially a grossly exaggerated version of the kind of loot that Mohammed's followers expected to find by following him in the first place, gold, jewels, silk, spices and young girls.

The gang of throat slitters who accompanied Mohammed on his massacres across the region were given a religious incentive that would transcend death. Even if they died in battle and would not live to enjoy all the jewels, overflowing cups and girls-- the Koran promised it to them in heaven anyway. One can imagine the gang or robbers, escaped slaves and ambitious desert rats trailing after Mohammed across desert dunes, their minds filled with the feverish promises of rich loot from the caravans they were raiding. And in the feverish heat, the idea that they would receive even better loot if they were to die in battle, making death preferable to life, would have actually seemed plausible.

Out of such such petty greed and lust did Islam initially expand. Its code was that of the tribesman, to lose face or engage in vendetta. Except Islam's face and vendetta did not involve a single man or a clan, it came to involve over a billion people, who found meaning in working toward the final conquest of Islam. The global triumph of a desert raider's clumsily hammered together mass of Jewish and Christian beliefs and tribal customs and legends, and his own biography, used as a tool of conquest, forging temporary unities out of quarreling tribes and clans.

And now Islam's vendetta is worldwide. Every insecurity translates into a provocation. Every jealous impulse never satisfied explodes into violent rage. Every conflict for thousands of years breeds a new vendetta. Did Muslims once live somewhere? They must reclaim it, for to fail to do so is blasphemous and a betrayal of Allah and Mohammed's mission. Did Muslims never live somewhere? Then they must go there now, and raise up minarets and proclaim the superiority of Islam, for to do otherwise is a failure to expand the borders of the Ummah, which is a betrayal of Allah and Mohammed's mission.

The very existence of people living free and happy, free from Islamic dominion, is blasphemy. Blasphemy that must be remedied by bringing them into Islam, or under the rule of Islamic law. Either one enforces the supremacy of Islam, because it is not absolutely necessary that everyone believe in Islam. As a matter of fact it would be rather inconvenient as there is little point on being on top, if there isn't anyone on the bottom. A world filled with nothing but Muslims, would deny the Believers the chance to lord it over the infidels. What matters though is that everyone be subservient to Islam, whether as Muslims or Dhimmis.

Meanwhile people who were once under Islamic dominion living free of Islam, is worse than blasphemy, it is an insult and an attack on Islam. That is what is behind the Muslim homicidal obsession with Israel, which had until recently been in Muslim hands under the Ottoman Empire. However even nations such as Spain, which had been lost to the Ummah long ago, still inspire rage. The liberation of the Jews from Islamic dominion is a particularly sore point, but not the only one. For all that the Koran rants about Jews and Christians, its ultimate aim is worldwide.

The intersection of Islam and Terrorism is not coincidental or the result of specific political moves made by non-Muslim nations, as the conventional narrative claims. It is the inevitable result of Islamic theology which is supremacist and materialist, which when combined with the honor-shame code of a tribal culture, drives it compulsively toward war and conquest. The actions of non-Muslim nations serve only as variables to create a context within which the supremacism of Islam expresses itself. These contexts may vary as often as the justifications used in a Bin Laden video. But the context itself is irrelevant in the larger history and theology of Islam. Because in the end, the problem of Islamic violence is the problem of Islam.